This invention relates to a method and apparatus for cultivating young seedlings of Welsh onion. The young seedling of Welsh onion, which is called "menegi" in Japanese, is a kind of vegetable having a fine stalk and can be easily cultured and harvested through all seasons of a year.
Referring to FIG. 1, the young seedling of Welsh onion has such growing progresses as mentioned below:
1. Seeds (a) of Welsh onion are planted on a culture bed (b).
2. A seed puts forth a bud and takes a root (c) in which a stalk (d) is in the bending state, as shown in FIG. 1 (I).
3. The stalk (d) is still growing in the bending state with a seed coat (e) on its end which is in a position apart from the planting surface (f), as shown in FIG. 1 (II).
4. Then, the stalk (d) stretches itself at the knee part (g) uprightly, in which the seed coat (e) is in the top position, as shown in FIG. 1 (III).
When a number of young seedlings of Welsh onion have grown up to an uprightly stretched state and a desired length, they are harvested.
Heretofore, seed coats on the top of young seedlings of Welsh onion are manually removed with fingers or combs and after removing them roots are cut away, or seed coats and roots are manually cut away together. Thus, remaining stalks are supplied as materials for hors-d'oeuvre, soup and Japanese "sushi".
However, the manual works for removing seed coats with fingers or combs as mentioned above are troublesome and inefficient, so that usually the means for cutting away seed coats is adopted. In this case, we cannot help cutting away additionally the stalk portion next to the seed coat as a matter of fact, which is uneconomical because the edible part of a stalk becomes shorter.